Home of the Practically Perfect Pink Phlox and other native plants for pollinators

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Bloom Day July 15, 2008...

July Gold Daylily

Welcome to Clay and Limestone Garden. This garden has many native(N) wildflowers and perennials indigenous to the Central Basin (Middle Tennessee), the Southeastern USA and some well mannered exotics from all over the place!...I hope you have a wonderful visit. If this is your first time here, please come by again. The conversations are lively and open to all.

Also, stop by Carol's (May Dreams Gardens) to say hello and find out which other Gardenbloggers are celebrating Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. Thank you Carol, I know that GBBD keeps getting bigger and I appreciate all you do! You're the best! gail

...and now for your enjoyment, my blooming plants! All photos enlarge with a click!

Oregano has plans to take over my world....definitely a mint family member! He's a wonderful groundcover....well, maybe not all of them are well behaved!

Stargazer Lily an oriental lily with star power, has brightened up the screened porch wildflower garden. If you have the orientals you know...they are even lovelier in closeup. Stargazer's perfume is sweet and draws Luna moths each night....the porch is a good place to watch and then breath deeply. I love working in this bed when they are blooming! These guys came from Costco...you don't have to spend a lot of money to get this kind of return.

Rudbeckia hirta reseeds and I let it! Without this plant by the end of July this garden would be desolate! (N)

Blackberry Lily/Belamcanda chinensis...I like the old bloom's twists on the tip of the developing seed pod.

Cosmos sulphureus. I have read that butterflies like this flower, but they seem to prefer the monarda, liatris and coneflower. It's pretty though. Do you have it in your garden?

Growing with the Hemerocallis fulva more golden and not nearly as orange. This is probably a version of fulva. I wonder how much the fulvas cross with other daylilies? Daylilies were my first love, wildflowers are my soul mates! Here are a few that are still in bloom.

The problem is that most of my Daylilies have misplaced their name tags in a big relocation move! So I am still trying to identify them! Even without a name they are lovely...don't you think?

Could this be Puddin or ubiquitous Stella?

Hyperion, a bit rain soaked but one of my favorite Daylilies...Hyperion is fragrant!

H fulva "Kwanzo" a delightful double ditch daylily!

Daylilies come in adorable and small flowered.

This lady has quite the smudged eye liner!

Blazing Star/Liatris spicata~~ A butterfly and bee magnet with his pal the the purple coneflower. (N)

This time attracting my camera strap! Did you know that Liatris is a member of the Aster family?

Spiderwort rebloomed after an early summer shearing. It's the only way to make him look tidy during the summer....keeps down the volunteers, too. How do you like it with the Amsonia hubrectii?....now that's a plant I highly recommend. (N)

Thin Leaf Coneflower or Rudbeckia triloba pops up here and there....it can get tall and the flowers are much smaller than other Rudbeckias, but in a native woodland it's perfect. (N)

Peachie's Pick/Stokesia laevis and a friend. Peachie has bloomed for several weeks and I am faithfully deadheading to see if she will rebloom. (N)

Summer phlox...it's back! After a two year absence from the garden! (N)

The last of the PPPP...Phlox Pilosa, the Practically Perfect Pink Phlox...I took this photo July 14, 2008 at 4:30 PM. So when I say it is long blooming I am not pulling your leg! (N) Here I am on Bloom Day adding this link to Mr McGregor's Daughter...who loves this plant as much as me!

Tennessee Coneflower, such a sweet flower, notice it's leaning toward the sun! We haven't it situated in the best spot! (N)

64 comments:

Wow Gail,That's quite the tour today! Absolutely great photos, too! Such lovely lilies that they almost make me want to plant some if we had the right spots! I miss my Cosmos ('Bright Lights'), as I had that for quite a few years until it finally disappeared (but I only planted it once and relied on volunteers). Next year I need to get some going again.

I'd never thought of planting Liatris (ours is starting to bloom now!) with the purple Monarda, but they look great together! And with the coneflowers too ... that Pink Monarda is actually quite pretty, not at all what I thought of when you mentioned it over at my place, because the varieties I've seen were much paler and more like the wild version. And that butterfly is spectacular! Oops, on second thought/view ... it appears to be a moth, but still lovely.

That was so nice of you to link to me on your blogroll (thanks!). Looks like you have one too many "http" in there, so you might want to edit that, lol. I always tread very lightly when adding things to mine, because one slip of the HTML and you don't quite get what you thought you were getting, lol.

What a festive post! Kwanzo it is then. Thanks.Tell me about the despised Stella: is she very much smaller than the usual daylillies? Or is my label wrong and are we not talking about the same plant here. Mine is titchy and so lovable that I am really bewildered by the dislike she causes.

The peachy blue plant is totally stealable, like a Monet painting in a museum. (If one of those goes missing, it is me that walked out with it.)

Didn't you do well with the butterflies. Not easy to get them to stay open for a shot. And I love the photo with the gate in the background. Is that there to stop them crossing the double yellow line :-) ?

Thank you...I feel honored indeed! I was looking at some of your earlier posts and your photos are excellent, so you see why I feel honored!

I think the monarda looks surprisingly good with the liatris. My color combinations are frequently happy accidents,if they go wrong they get moved...occasionaly or a mitigating color might help!

With the monarda colors...I find that colors don't always show true on cameras or monitors! I never know if the pink I see is the pink you see....and they never look like the photos at the nursery sites!

Hmm, I am puzzled about the html...that was a blogger link...I can get it to work does it not work for you? I linked to your monarda post. Let me know and I will try to fix it! I do mean try as html is a foreign language!

Glad you're back. You are very welcome...it was a pleasure that I could I identify a plant for you...you are far better at that than I.

When Stella came out on the market...she was an instant hit and why not she is cute and has a lovely bloom and reblooms...but everyone one and his grandmother began selling them and soon they were everywhere! Stella is mass planted in almost every commercial building site in America and gardeners are feeling saturated with the color. Is the photo Stella? Maybe! But it could be Puddin another sweet golden yellow~

The butterflies and moths cooperated by sitting quite still as I lumbered about! Also, it took many shots...we love digital!

The gate is a actually a garage sale headboard from a twin bed! A sweet vine wa supposed to be planted there...and now I have a space for one of the less climby clematis I bought!

Hi Gail, thanks for identifying which are natives, that is something I don't know much about unless I have looked it up. We have been growing many plants for many years without the native knowledge. I just go with what will grow LOL. Our cosmos are up but not even budded yet. I have trouble waiting until the ground is warm enough before throwing out the seeds. They used to self sow so there wasn't any problem then. Your are heavy on the purple shades, so lovely. The daylilies help set that off, as well as the lilies. Thank goodness for those black eyed susans, all types of them, we so need that splash of yellow in the late summer garden before the goldenrod and mums kick in. Your porch with the lilies and luna moths sounds like heaven.Frances

Love the photo of the liatris with coneflower--a great combo and a very artistic photo.Just yesterday I was looking through a bulb catalog debating about the Stargazer lily. I'm glad I could see it is as lovely in your garden as in the catalog.

I'm envious of your Tennessee coneflower--after some research, I discovered there is no Illinois coneflower(:

Just for the heck of it Frances, I googled native plants and boy oh boy...people sure like to argue and as a friend says so well, "get their panties in a wad!" Lines are drawn in the sand! My son and I talk about this subject frequently...he is a grad student and doing research on invasive plants, anyway, it's always a fascinating discussion...sometime I want him to write a guest post. he did tease me about the verbascum thapsis! It is one of the invasives that he is counting in his field work!

I really am heavy on the purple tones! If I were a little girl now would I be dressed all in purple and lilac with pink crocs?

The cosmos came from a packet of flowers I bought at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center gift shop! It's the only plant that grew and bloomed! I am liking it a lot and think he looks good with the purples...now if he can throw his seeds uphill!

I am glad you came by...August won't have this color and now that we are going back into the 90's July won't either!

Gail-What a flower parade. The daylilies are gorgeous Mine have just given out in the heat, their foliage just fried! Really the tropicals, grasses and most extreme drought tolerant are my buddies right now. I wish I could have hydrangea like you! But we do have the purple coneflower in common- I just love it. So dramatic. But who is scarfing yours down???

Hi Gail, your daylilies are beautiful and everything else for that matter. I love the photo of the phlox and liatris against the iron trellis - that is a beautiful shot. I have a question about trimming the spiderwort - how far exactly do you cut yours back?

Your header is lovely and such a true statement...nature is therapeutic! We are lucky that we got some rainshowers recently other wise July can be desolate here! August here probably is like your late June has been. I often think that I have been short sighted to not capture all the winter rains in a GREAT BIG CISTERN!

Well, you have a lot of color, too...you have the butterflies! This is the tail end of the liatris, dayliliesconeflowers (soon cones) and probably the monardas! But then we have the Black and brown eyed susans!

I can't believe you Phlox pilosa is still blooming. Mine stopped last week. Not fair! I like that Thinleaved Rudbeckia. Is it hardy in Zone 5? That might be just the thing for the way back of the woodland garden. I'm so glad your Phlox paniculata bloomed this year. They are such a mainstay of the summer garden.

Gail, I'm always inspired by my cyber-visits to your garden. I hope someday I can visit for real ... I'll bring a bottle of wine and we can sit on the porch to enjoy the view and the fragrance of the lilies!

I had cut back the spent bloom stalks on my Peachie's Pick Stokesia and you reminded me to take a look at it. It's blooming again, so I expect yours will, too. Sure hope so!

Wow, what a beautiful list, Gail! I didn't realize that the monardas are natives, so that's good to know. I bought a dwarf one that stays about a foot tall, and it makes me feel better about planting them. :)

Thank you...it is easy to find so many to love, Daylilies, I mean! I still like the simple unruffled the best and the spiders, of course...which is why Hyperion appeals to me. Glad you stopped by for a visit. You're always welcome.

Hi! Now I know that my daylilies by the mailbox are H fulva "Kwanzo". I love that they are double! They were planted before we owned the house, but they have really taken off in the last couple of years.

I love your spiderwort, it's one of my favorites!

Thanks for your bloom day post - I just did my very first one. It's fun to go and see what other people have going on in their gardens.

No it's actually an iris..Belamcanda chinensis is it's botanical name and it is an easy plant to grow and makes delightful seed pods...that look like a blackberry cluster...so cute. It comes in orange and yellow and maybe other colors. If you buy one it will make more babies from the seeds.

Gail, the blooms are fabulous, and I notice we have a lot of the same flowers in our gardens. I just got blackberry lily from a friend last year, and this was the first I'd seen it bloom. It is really pretty. Happy Bloom Day.~~Dee

Love those stargazers Gail, and the fragrance is just heavenly. My sister's wedding bouquet was mostly stargazers. (Guess who suggested them ;) She was like the pied piper that day, mesmerizing people with those gorgeous blooms with their hypnotic scent. The photographer loved how they looked against her fair skin, and there are lots of shots with her bouquet near her face - in all of them her skin looks perfectly porcelain.

All of your blooms are beautiful. I love how you combine natives with cultivated plants.

Hyperions are one of my favorite daylilies. Love the fragrance, and they're just the perfect shade of yellow.

What a lovely image you have created with a bride, beautiful flowers and a parade of admirers around her. A designer friend has said that certain pinks are 'the color' for all women, especially women of a certain age!

I love combining natives and the exotics! They are fun and truthfully...needed in this garden!

There are wonderful daylilies out there, new ones hourly, but the older ones like Hyperion, Kindly Light and lemon daylily remain my favorites! Yes the fragrance is lovely.

Thank you...I did enjoy your garden and loved when I read that your husband teases you about wanting to be an 'English Lady'....It was so sweet. I do like Daylilies and have been glad they are here to brighten up the garden!

Hi Gail, What a thoughtful, beautiful post! I hope you're having time to actually Enjoy your garden these days! Summer can sneak by pretty quickly. Thank you for giving me an ID on the "Kwanzo." I found a site that is Wonderful for daylily ID. I've found a couple of exact matches lately! http://www.ofts.com/photo/dl_view.html Enjoy! :-)

When I moved here in 1989 Kwanso or Kwanzo daylilies were growing wild and I transplanted some into my garden. I thought they were rare but later find they are fairly abundant. They are gorgeous!!! Too bad they are sterile.Marnie

Have you moved the Eryngium planum to a new spot or waiting till fall? I have lots of clashing colors and I read someplace that adding white or even the right yellow helps...I'm not entirely sure that is the case...it's like kids, sometimes they have to be separated and sent to seats in the classroom.

I still like Kwanzo and although it isn't rare most people don't have it in the gardens! I find it pops up here and there...I didn't know it was sterile. I thought it was traveling! Maybe I moved them and don't remember!

Hulllllloooooo Gail !Wow .. you have been so busy with such beautiful pictures ! My raccoon saga sucked the life out of me ! LOLI love all of your plants and wish I had the room for them too .. but we have a few in common and that is a good thing as Martha ? would say ? LOLI did a little post on one of your favorite ones .. it is a cutie !Joy : )

When we had the raccoon in our crawl space, it was all consuming! Then a possum climbed into the pipe that connected to our french drains and climbed all the way to a downspout...where I could hear him all day long . I couldn't figure out where the noise was coming from and knew the raccoon was back! Then I happened to be outside and saw this weird pink nose sticking out of the down spout! I ripped the downspout off...he refused to come out and instead hissed at me...the ingrate! So I concocted a tent of tarps and chairs to give him privacy to climb out! He left and I 'fixed' the downspout. The story is longer but I will save the 'fixed' downspout story till later!

Gail .. love the possum story .. I would have passed out from shock of it hissing at me ? LOLI haven't been working in the garden for days now and it shows it .. the raccoon adventure sucked the life out of me with worry .. worry for us .. and worry for raccoon mommy and her little ones .. soon the repair work will be complete and we can get our routine back ? BIG sigh ! ; )

I enjoyed the tour - you have so much loveliness in your garden! I think I will have to get more monarda . . . . (so you're not helping my "collecting" tendencies)! Thanks for sharing all your lovely flowers.

I've been gardening here for more than 30 years. Plants have to be rugged to survive our wet winters and dry summers~that's why I plant Middle Tennessee and Cedar Glade natives that will grow and thrive in clay and limestone. You can email me at gailtiles@gmail.com with your wildflower gardening questions.

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I promise to honor my garden; to not fall prey to comparisons and the dissatisfaction they breed; to not for a minute think a gorgeous flowering face is enough to base a gardening relationship upon and to never, ever disparage the garden to another gardener...more

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My journey to becoming a wildflower gardener

Once upon a time, the sloped land that would become my wildflower garden was a rocky forest of native trees, shrubs, perennials and ephemerals. Sixty years ago the developer’s bulldozers cut streets through the oak-hickory-red cedar woodland. They built brick houses that had deep backyards and shallow front yards. They left a few trees and took out the understory. They planted grass so that boys and girls could play baseball, kickball and reach for the sky on their backyard swings. ...click for more